During the evening (and indeed during the night) she moved to the bathroom basin. No, I don't know why.

She got very bad before Christmas, but recovered beautifully after we had rehomed the Senior cats, so we put it down to stress. But now she is bad again - not as bad, but we certainly don't want to see her get in a state again. So off to the vet with her.

Yes, she has a rash, no they have no idea why. They gave us Clavaseptin antibiotics for her, which they claimed were palatable. Oh, and 15 quids worth of flea spray, which entirely matches the one I already have. I shall see if they'll take it back.

Palatable, eh? We know better than that, don't we? We used the pill popper for the first two, but she hated it. And so, more in a spirit of despair than anything else, last night Pete tried just putting the pill in his hand.

She took it ... with every evidence of enjoyment. And this morning, she took it from me too.

Hurrah, I think. Apart from the £50 bill.

We once took a photo of the whole Tribe together on the bed - it was in the days when They Were Nine, and gone are Mollie, Zool, Shrimp and Drumknott, and Esk and Ptep have moved to Norwich.

I doubt we'll ever get the current Tribe to sit together, but they were all in the study together yesterday, waiting for us to turn off the rain, so here's a photo montage of them all.

Taken on my phone.

Pete said he had vaguely heard some scrabblings just before the crash, so we think that some unfortunate small creature had been brought in by one of the Tribe, and had taken refuge either under the bowl, or under the bookcase behind it.

and when things were back to what passes for normal here, and we were ready to return to bed, Aliss had taken up a position of eternal vigilance by the bowl - one that she adopts well, I have to say.

no sign of the creature so far, but it may have perished by now, of course.

we were away for a couple of days at the weekend, and the excellent Kelly at Rascal's Retreat looked after them. We've seen everyone now since we got back apart from Aliss and Mustrum - we try not to don't worry about Mussie, as he is big enough and ugly enough to look after himself. But I don't like it when Aliss disappears.

but she waltzed in this morning, chirping away. What I want to know is:

why don't cat food manufacturers make a "fatted calf" variety?

so when she went missing last week, we were at first concerned, and then really worried. Last seen when we went to bed on Thursday 15 June, by Tuesday we were quietly frantic, and I was pretty much resigned to not seeing her again.

last night I dreamt of her, and when I awoke at 6 this morning and went to the bathroom, I thought of the way she would join me in there, giving her wonderful Maine Coon chirp as she arrived, and weaving around my legs as I ... well, you know what we do in bathrooms.

and then there *was* a chirp, and there she was! I could hardly believe it - I thought I must still be dreaming. Although Other Blob is not what you might call a morning person [this is an understatement - Ed], I bundled her up and carried her through to the bedroom, and woke him up, and he beamed at her in a blearly and slightly unbelieving fashion.

she's fine - fit and well, not thin at all. But she's lost her wonderful characteristic Aliss smell, which is an aroma of damp earth and gardens. So we wonder if someone forcibly adopted her and kept her in, until she found a way to escape and run for home.

but she's back, and we're more pleased that I can say. She's sleeping in one of her favourite places as I type - on my desk, in full view of the catcams, if you'd like to check up on her.

welcome *home*, my Aliss.

we went and bought the plants this afternoon for the baskets and hanging planters. Here they are, complete with furry helpers.

everything is now planted (apart from the growbag's tomato and pepper plants).

And, as generally happens to me, I was out watering these bloody baskets in torrential rain, with thunder and lightning overhead.

thank *you*, weather ghod.

this afternoon, while Aliss was sitting on my desk, as the Tribe so often do, my keyboard stopped working. Given that it's a brand new one, I was somewhat discombobulated. Further investigation showed the the mouse was also in non-working mode. This is a Mac, and the mouse is plugged into the keyboard, so it gave us something to go on.

Pete found the end of the keyboard USB lead under the monitor, and tried - without success - to plug it back in. He's had some problems with his eyesight recently, so I had a go. And couldn't find the socket to plug it in to. He was trying to plug the USB card reader in [sigh]. Once we worked this out, it was a simple task to unplug and replug the keyboard, which then worked.

all the time we were doing this, Aliss was washing us in a marked manner. So it was probably all a ploy to get Blobs within washing range. And, of course, it worked, as cats' plans mostly do.

it was a deceased rodent, which is probably just as well.

photographic evidence here